Time tracking can be a good way to see how you've been spending your time and how it compares to how you would like to be spending it. It's something that Julia and I have done a few times (December 2017, June 2017, 2015, 2011) and I've generally found it pretty helpful. This time we tracked two weeks, 2022-01-05 through 2022-01-11 and 2022-01-18 through 2022-01-24. These were pretty normal work weeks for the two of us these days:

• This is with three kids, 7y, 5y, and 7m.

• Paid childcare 9-5 each workday, with the exception of one day where our nanny called in sick.

• Nora was sick one of the days. Julia spent more time nursing her, including during the workday, because she was refusing the bottle.

• No travel or dance gigs.

• No big house projects.

• I took one afternoon off work to take the older kids sledding.

Categories:

• Sleep: Lights out to lights on. Julia tracked an average of 0:24/night of post-nursing insomnia that's included in the total here. I also had some insomnia after nighttime wakings, but wouldn't have been able to track it without making the insomnia worse. I subtracted 0:15 each night as a guess for how long Julia and I talk before falling asleep. Does not include night nursing; that's under "childcare".

• Work: The entire workday, including lunch, incidental personal stuff mixed in with working, pumping milk etc. Julia works from home; I worked 4/10 days from the office, and included the commute here (0:09 of the total; 0:35 per day I commuted).

• Housework: cooking, cleaning, tidying, fixing things, dealing with taxes.

• J+J: time together without any of the kids.

• Family: relaxing/playing with others in the family

• Childcare: taking care of the kids. Julia's time includes 1:55/day of nursing (62% of her total). Nursing while hanging out with family is under "family", though.

• Personal: blogging, making a go board, exercising, reading things, showering, free time generally.

Some distinctions:

• When doing multiple things at once, like both cooking and looking after a fussy Nora, we counted these as "housework" > "childcare" > "work". That is, doing housework and childcare at the same time coded as "housework".

• "Family" vs "childcare" is a bit fuzzy. In 2017 we counted all time solo with the kids as "childcare", but as they have gotten older that no longer seems like a good fit. Instead, it's perhaps whether one would rather have someone else to do it if that were a matter of snapping one's fingers? Examples:

  • Childcare: changing Nora, hanging out with her when she is fussy, getting the kids ready for bed, getting them to school, time with them when I would otherwise be working.

  • Family: playing with a happy Nora, Nora on my lap while I play music, park time with the older kids, reading to them, morning cuddles, games.

Here are our numbers, in terms of average hours per day:

And a comparison to my numbers from 2017:

• The decrease in time Julia and I have alone together is mostly from the 2017 sample being unusual: we had two evenings out together (speaking at a local college and my work holiday party) when we usually don't take any.

• The decrease in my work time (9:27 to 8:01 per workday) is a mix of that I took a half-day vacation, that I'm not commuting, and that we missed a day of childcare.

• The increase in personal time is partly earlier kid bedtime.

• The decrease in housework time is mostly from the "working on the house" subcategory; the house is now in decent shape and I'm not putting nearly so much work into it.